Friday Night Lights
The game of football has long been used as a model for life lessons, and Friday Night Lights does an excellent job in that tradition. This is ultimately not a football story. Although its plot follows the true story of Permian High School in Odessa, Texas, in its march to the state football championships, it’s really about learning what’s most important in life.
Much of the story’s impact comes from the fast cutting, hard hitting visual style of director and co screenwriter Peter Berg. The jittery camera and rapid intercutting communicate the violence of football as well as the tension in the lives of the players and the town.
Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) is in his first year as football coach at Permian High. He is under great pressure from fans to deliver another state championship in the Odessa tradition, although this year’s crop of athletes is admittedly smaller than some on previous teams. Everyone’s hope is placed in unstoppable running back Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), undoubtedly destined for great things in college and beyond. Boobie tears a ligament in the first game, however, taking him out for the season.
The subsequent struggle is not only for victory, but also for confidence, self respect and teamwork. In the coming from behind and overcoming all odds tradition, Friday Night Lights is exciting and filled with tension, especially because we know that what happens is based on a true story. But the real theme of the movie is found in the changes that several key players and their families undergo.
As the season begins to unwind, Coach Gaines becomes the subject of hostile callers on a local radio talk show and is warned by boosters that his job is in jeopardy. He is not slow to scream at his players when they don’t meet his expectations. And he repeatedly encourages his players to “be perfect.”
Boobie Miles must come back from narcissistic self pity and self imposed isolation after his injury. Quarterback Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), saddled with extreme pressure from his mother, is filled with self doubt. Don Billingsley (Garret Hedlund) is publicly berated by his boozing, out of control father. Himself a former winner of a state championship, he warns Don that winning will be the biggest thing in his life and he’s fumbling it away. But it is evident that he is really talking about his own life.
On the eve of the final championship game Odessa players and their coach face the challenge of how to possibly lose without being losers. By this time each one has confronted his personal demons, paving the way for personal reconciliations whatever the game’s outcome. The key is in Coach Gaines’s halftime speech. “Being perfect,” he says, is being there for each other and loving one another.
Although the film presents a highly moral theme, it’s not for small children.
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